Unreal Engine might be the most well-known online game software set in the world. Its fifth iteration is the system that types the basis of Fortnite and dozens of different video games, together with Black Fantasy: Wukong, the Oblivion remaster, and the upcoming Witcher 4. However do you know that Unreal Engine is used for extra than simply making video video games? The know-how, developed by Epic Video games, has additionally been used to create theme park rides, tv exhibits, and films – and is quick changing into a daily software for the leisure trade.
Taking centre stage in Galaxy’s Edge, the Star Wars-themed part of Disney’s parks in Florida and California, is the Millennium Falcon. Head inside and you may trip Smuggler’s Run, a simulator expertise that permits you to pilot the iconic ship. It’s genuinely spectacular – you and your six-person crew have direct (if restricted) management over the Falcon’s actions and weapons, and in order you alter the pitch and yaw of the ship, not solely does the whole cockpit bodily lurch round, your inputs are mirrored in the flight path and enemy encounters. All which means the world past the cockpit’s home windows isn’t only a easy video. It’s dynamic and interactive. Merely put, the group at Walt Disney Imagineering have created a online game. Maybe unsurprisingly, it’s inbuilt Unreal Engine.
Throughout a latest presentation as half of Unreal Fest Orlando, Disney Imagineering’s Govt VP of Artistic & Interactive Experiences, Asa Kalama, defined that Smuggler’s Run is predicated on a “customized fork of Unreal Engine model 4 that helps a quantity of particular results that we and our companions at Industrial Mild & Magic felt have been actually necessary to ship one thing that feels cinematic. It feels such as you’re in the film.”
“[We did] loads of work to develop customized shaders and customized full display screen area results like bloom,” Kalama explains. “Movement blur was one thing that we really had loads of fascinating philosophical conversations round, as a result of in actual life there isn’t any movement blur, however a key high quality of making one thing really feel like Star Wars and really feel actually cinematic is the capability to have that impact on. So after loads of testing and loads of analysis, we really decided that that was one thing that made it really feel extra actual, regardless that actually it was really barely much less actual.”
Many of Unreal’s built-in results weren’t usable by Disney’s group, as Smuggler’s Run’s 5 interlinked projectors wanted to make use of a dice map rendering method, which was incompatible with many typical Unreal options. However the ensuing customized department of Unreal Engine 4, full with belongings taken straight from Industrial Mild & Magic’s library, means the trip’s digital results each work as meant and really feel genuine.
The present mission utilized by Smuggler’s Run opened in 2019, however a model new one is at present in growth, which is deliberate to launch alongside the launch of The Mandalorian and Grogu in Might 2026. Whereas not linked to the occasions of the new film, Mando and his little good friend will nonetheless function as half of the mission, which sees crews seek out a high-stakes bounty.
“We’re upgrading our present recreation pc, so newest era CPU graphics playing cards,” Kalama reveals. “After which we’re additionally shifting from Unreal Engine 4 to Unreal Engine 5, and we’re actually enthusiastic about all the extra visible constancy that that is finally going to unlock for us.”
The mission will even function branching pathways, permitting crews to discover both Cloud Metropolis, Corouscant, or the wreckage of the Loss of life Star relying on the flight path they select. “After which, even inside every of the stage environments themselves, we have labored with our companions at ILM to develop ranges which have significantly extra branching,” Kalama provides. “In order that even in case you return to the identical vacation spot, there is a new route or new secrets and techniques to uncover.”
It looks as if the concept is to additional blur the line between theme park trip and online game, which in flip will improve the immersive impact of really commanding the Millennium Falcon. In fact, Smuggler’s Run is way from the first Star Wars undertaking to make use of Unreal Engine in an unconventional manner. The system has been used to create the digital backdrops utilized in TV exhibits like The Mandalorian and Ahsoka. The Third Ground, a visible results firm primarily based in LA, has labored alongside Industrial Mild & Magic to create these Star Wars exhibits.
“We began experimenting with recreation engines with numerous choices in the 2010s,” recollects The Third Ground’s Chief Artistic Officer, Joshua Wassung. “And actually, simply as Unreal matured in the mid 2010s, we began getting actually enthusiastic about shifting into that platform and actually dove all in for The Mandalorian in 2019. [That’s] after we made the massive shift.”
Star Wars could also be in a galaxy far, distant, however The Third Ground not too long ago took Unreal Engine to a complete new frontier – the world of The Predator. The brand new film from Prey director Dan Trachtenberg, Predator: Killer of Killers, was totally animated utilizing Unreal Engine 5.
“Unreal is a system that permits you to accomplish that many various issues,” Wassung enthuses. “It helps you to pursue your individual artwork. So our explicit method was that we actually needed to lean into shifting idea artwork. We needed all the pieces to be hand painted.” Unreal Engine was used to ingest a whole lot of work, which have been then utilized by a real-time compositing system to mix a number of layers collectively. “It was the flexibility of the engine that allowed us to essentially push that specific look that we have been going for,” says Wassung.
One of the most spectacular sequences in Predator: Killer of Killers replicates the “one-shot” model of filmmaking. In it we see a Viking lady, Ursa, combat towards an array of enemies in a single steady, unbroken shot. This model is amongst the most advanced approaches to create in live-action filmmaking, demanding intensive rehearsal, strict timing, and pin-point precision. It’s a distinct story when animating in Unreal, the place there’s no probability of an actor flubbing their line or lacking their mark. However that’s to not say there aren’t any challenges.
“There’s so many components,” says Wassung. “I feel we had 98 characters all preventing in that scene. And so we’ve possibly only a handful of animators. So juggling methods to choreograph them is extremely advanced. However then you definately additionally must animate the digicam in a manner that feels such as you’re actually there. It is simply a lot thought goes into it, and it took months, however we love the outcome.”
However whereas making a “one-shot”, or certainly any shot, in Unreal is way from a stroll in the park, there are lots of instruments accessible in the engine that assist ease manufacturing woes. Formidable initiatives may be made comparatively shortly, which in flip can scale back budgets.
“Unreal does allow you to work in parallel, so that you’ve groups working a bit extra concurrently, which does pace up the manufacturing, and time is cash,” Wassung says.
“However the different factor is the real-time suggestions,” he notes. “Usually, pictures in an animated function would possibly take an artist say one, two, even three weeks for one shot. Our quota, as soon as the group acquired going, was 4 to 5 hours per shot per artist for First Cross, which is simply insanely fast. So it is actually the time, the truth that you may go sooner means that you can save prices total.”
This price saving ingredient is unlocking new filmmaking prospects. Riot Developments, the proprietor of Choose Dredd and the wider 2000 AD comics universe, is at present creating a brand new Rogue Trooper film. Set on the violent battlefields of the far future, this comedian adaptation would doubtless price a whole lot of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} to supply if made utilizing extra conventional filmmaking strategies. However Rogue Trooper will not be a live-action film, nor a classically-developed CGI movie. As a substitute, it’s being made in Unreal Engine 5.
“We’re considerably cheaper,” Riot CEO Jason Kingsley informed IGN in an interview final yr. “We have achieved it on an indie price range. We have by necessity needed to handle the money circulate as a result of it is us making this. It is not a giant studio doing it.”
Kingsley goes on to notice that such financial savings “maybe takes some of the shackles of restricted price range off individuals who need to make one thing indie and artistic. I hope it does. I hope it is the starting of one thing actually thrilling.”
Whereas Riot is the custodian of 2000 AD, the firm is greatest identified for creating video video games, reminiscent of the Sniper Elite collection. And so comes the massive query: with out the Hollywood-grade instruments utilized by the likes of Industrial Mild & Magic and Wētā FX, will Rogue Trooper simply be a feature-length online game cutscene?
“One of the key factors was to make it very a lot not appear like a online game,” Kingsley emphasises. “So we’ve skilled film makers engaged on this. We’ve cinematographers, we’ve film lighting consultants, we have got all the folks with the {qualifications} to make the very best films.”
Amongst these folks with {qualifications} is Duncan Jones, director of Moon, Supply Code, and the CGI effects-heavy Warcraft film. With Jones at the helm and a small military of skilled filmmakers backing him, Riot has all the folks required to make sure Rogue Trooper doesn’t appear like it’s working on an Xbox.
Rogue Trooper’s solid, which options Aneurin Barnard, Hayley Atwell, Sean Bean, and Matt Berry amongst many others, is being delivered to life with the support of MetaHuman rigs, a personality creation and motion-capture know-how constructed into Unreal Engine 5. The system was not utilized by The Third Ground for Predator: Killer of Killers, however Wassung nonetheless sees loads of worth in it.
“So many occasions you are making CG people for no matter cause. They could be simply doubles for a stunt, or they could be your lead character. You are sort of doing the identical work over and over once more, no less than on a base stage,” he explains. “And I feel that MetaHuman is that this huge shortcut as a result of loads of that work is now already constructed into this software. So I feel that that permits a younger filmmaker by themselves to leap proper into a personality that is already at this very excessive stage.”
For Riot and its animation companions at Treehouse Digital, options like MetaHumans and the visible results that Unreal Engine 5 is succesful of have been key to bringing the unusual world of Rogue Trooper to life. “What we’re not making an attempt to do is make it look precisely the identical as it could if we have been filming reside motion,” says Kingsley. “We’re taking benefit of the digital area so we are able to do extra with volumetric fogging, for instance, than you can in actual life.”
Whereas Unreal Engine should still be predominantly identified for its use in online game growth, it’s clear that it has quietly unfold its attain all through many different sectors of the leisure industries. The galaxy of Star Wars is virtually united by Unreal, with exhibits, video games, and theme park rides all making use of the engine. Elsewhere, we’re seeing the tech utilized in many filmmaking corners, from the pre-planning of the desert sequences in Dune: Half 2, to whole films created in the engine, reminiscent of Predator: Killer of Killers and Rogue Trooper. One factor appears sure: that checklist will solely carry on rising as new studios and new creatives start to experiment with Epic Video games’ versatile know-how.
Matt Purslow is IGN’s Senior Options Editor.